Schools cutting hours – some open only four-and-a-half days a week

… “Many have been left with no choice but to bring in a 4.5-day week for kids as they cannot staff classrooms properly.

The measures come as a Mirror ­investigation found schools are so strapped for cash many special needs pupils are not getting support as heads have had to axe teaching assistants, leading to fears of behavioural problems.

That is coupled with a lack of basic ­equipment, growing class sizes, no cash to repair leaky buildings, staff shortages and cancelled school trips.

At least 24 schools across the land, including 14 in Birmingham alone, have ditched lessons on Friday afternoons. And more than 200 other heads have warned they are considering doing the same. …

The whole idea of abandoning grammar / secondary modern schools and moving to Comprehensives was to get rid of a two tier system that favoured the elite few and disadvantaged the many.

How ironic that it was the Conservatives who mocked Labour incorrectly for wanting to take Britain back to the 1970s when it is in fact the Conservatives who have already taken us back to the 1960s on Education and to the 1860s on social care and housing, with an obvious aim to take us back to the feudal 1660s on all the above plus healthcare.